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Apple's Steve Jobs meets with Obama to talk energy, job creation

Apple CEO Steve Jobs met with President Obama on Thursday in a rare connection for the nation's most valuable high-tech company that has been purposefully shy of Beltway culture.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the meeting took place during Obama's visit to San Francisco and the two discussed energy independence and ways to increase job creation.

"They discussed American competitiveness and education, especially reforms such as the President's Race to the Top initiative," Gibbs said in a statement.

Earlier, Gibbs told reporters traveling on Air Force One from Seattle to San Francisco that it was "a meeting the president was interested in having." The last time they met was during Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. Later in the day, White House pool reporters said Obama gave a Democratic party fundraiser speech at the Palo Alto home of Google executive Marissa Mayer.

Apple, despite its size and growing reach into new businesses -- mobile phone software and devices, television and music -- has a decidedly small lobbying and policy operation in Washington. The company spent $340,000 in lobbying in the last quarter, a fraction of the amount that competitor Microsoft and telecom giant AT&T spend.

Apple has about four lobbyists, headed by Cathy Novelli. a former assistant U.S. Trade Representative. Apple has contracted Paul Margie, a partner at Wiltshire & Grannis, to press the Federal Communications Commission on communications policies.

But those issues -- including lobbying on a requirement for devices to contain an aid for the hearing impaired -- are few and not at the top of the agency's agenda, even as Apple sits at the center of many policy issues, analysts said. Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T to sell and operate the popular iPhone has sparked criticism from smaller carriers, which say they don't have the scale to attract similar deals. The FCC also questioned why voice application Skype was blocked on the iPhone.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reviewed practices by the company that were criticized as anti-competitive. Justice settled its probe of Apple and high-tech firms for agreeing to keep wages down by not hiring from one another. The FTC looked into a complaint by Adobe that Apple was blocking its Flash software and unfairly harming its business through its control over the iPhone applications store. Apple ended up relaxing its rules for applications developers.

With $51 billion in cash and a drive to make acquisitions, observers said Apple will face increased interest by lawmakers and regulators. Apple's stock is approaching the value of Exxon Mobile as the most valued U.S. public company.

"One of the advantages Apple has enjoyed in terms of antitrust scrutiny is that it has remained a small yet successful and profitable player in market," said Andy Gavil, an antitrust law professor at Howard University. "It has received more attention recently because of the popularity of the iTunes store and the iPhone."

The company, like many Silicon Valley firms before it, has kept a skeptical eye on Washington policy and legislation except for issues directly related to its products such as patent law reform, taxes and trade.

But analysts say the company may not be able to keep its distance for too long.

"They are probably going to move in the direction of Google, which was also initially dismissive of Washington and the inside-the-Beltway issues," said Rebecca Arbogast of Stifel Nicolaus. "But they are now at the vortex of some key issues at the FCC and FTC that they will need to move forward on."

Like always, the leftists in the media never ask the questions of the Dem-wits and their supporters that they ask of the GOP: Questions about what the candidates would cut in government; and Who are the contributors; and big examples of hypocrisy. Never... but hell-boy the GOP are asked all the time. Thankfully, people have learned to give the media ZERO credibility.

I am sure Obama is giving Steve Jobs the greenlight to use the "Double Irish" play out of the Google playbook.
Obama promised to look the other way for a yearly token of "friendship" to the Democrat coffers.

I hope Jobs reminded Obama of his 2008 campaign promise to promote a mandate that all new cars be able to run on something OTHER than gasoline.

See the top of page 5, here:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf

If the URL gets blocked, Google "Read the full version of The Obama-Biden New Energy for America plan"

Here's the relevant passage: "Mandate All New Vehicles are Flexible Fuel Vehicles. Sustainably‐produced biofuels can create jobs, protect the environment and help end oil addiction – but only if Americans drive cars that will take such fuels. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work with Congress and auto companies to ensure that all new vehicles have FFV capability – the capability by the end of his first term in office."

Never mind the "sustainable" fluff/buzzword: what matters is making sure cars are flex-fueled. This is the absolute KEY step that has not been done, but which would make a HUGE difference. We can mess around with subsidizing alternative fuel all we want, but it won't make any difference IF THE CARS CAN'T USE IT.

It's unfortunate this CRUCIAL idea was buried among a long laundry list of irrelevant and ineffective distractions, and even more unfortunate that it has been forgotten and neglected since then.

Some Members of Congress, from both parties and all ideological persuasions (including hardcore conservatives like Sam Brownback and Roscoe Bartlett), have tried to pick up the ball the President has dropped. The Open Fuel Standards Act (S. 835 and H.R. 1476) would require nearly all new gasoline cars sold in America to be fully flex fueled, able to run not just on ethanol but also methanol, and diesel cars to be able to run on biodiesel. Unfortunately it has gotten little attention and been buried in committee.

Meanwhile millions of cars each year are added to the fleet, each of them with around a ten year lifespan, all of them unnecessarily locked in to petroleum as their ONLY source of fuel.

It would cost automakers only about $130 per car to do break oil's monopoly and give drivers fuel choice. We should make this a required standard feature, like seat belts.

Yes Xteve Jobs has created many jobs in the USA. He has a legion of lawyers ready to attack anyone who dare criticize him.
The 51 billion in the bank is a result of his slave labor in CHINA, building all his products. Wake up America!!!

"Obama meets with another job outsourcing gasbag fro the hi-tech world". Instead of gladhanding with JOBS, Obama should have the Justice Department holding this bas**ard and every other CEO of "multinational" corporations in prison. The exective staff of most multinational corporations are at least guilty of treason an, as a group, they form the largest criminal syndicate in world history. And, of course, Obama fawns all over them. How pathetic.

Amosbyrd, not all alcohol fuels are biofuels. Methanol can be made from coal (which have centuries of; we're the Saudi Arabia of coal), or extremely cheaply from natural gas. And not all biofuels are made from edible products: cellulosic ethanol (overhyped in my opinion) can be made from inedible biomass, and methanol can be more cheaply made from ANY biomass without exception, including crop residues, weed plants that need periodic clearing anyway (kudzu, water hyacinths), even trash and sewage.

I agree we should drop barriers to Brazilian or other tropical ethanol, but corn ethanol gets a bad rap, no doubt because it's the most-used and biggest alternative to oil in America. It's not responsible for higher food prices; higher oil prices played a much bigger role. Even while ethanol corn production went up several fold in the last decade, food corn production also went up rather than down, as have other staples such as soybeans.

Electricity can indeed be made many ways, and electric cars are an exciting alternative, but they are too limited and far too expensive to replace gasoline cars in anything like a rapid timeframe, especially globally. While we continue to encourage EV production and adoption, we can't just ignore the vast majority of the rest of the auto market. We must insist: if it burns gasoline, it should also be able to run an alcohol. That's the only way to really break the OPEC monopoly in a matter of years rather than decades.

Sure you lefty clowns, Steve sits on 51 billion instead of paying shareholder dividends. Steve sits on 51 billion thanks to Chinese slave labor, instead of sitting on maybe 40 billion if the products were made in America.

What a typical left wing idiot.

What a typical elitist. Next we will read about how Apple pays 2.4% corporate taxes. Of course it is mandatory to be a total hypocrite as a elite liberal, so nobody will say anything. Just how great Apple is. Can you imagine if Rupert Murdoch owned Apple? The left would be in a frenzy.

And Steve, how about donating some money to charities like Microsoft does? Instead of wasting money on commercials about how lame Microsoft is. No Microsoft is not as juvenile as to waste money talking about how great they are.

We have made great strides to clean our air here in the USA.
I remember the skies in Vietnam being poisoned with agent orange in 1969. But, they had the most beautiful orange sunsets, wonder why?
Prior to 1999, 1969-1999, I remember the skies over Phoenix, clear blue, not a cloud in the sky. It was truly the valley of the sun, 360 days of clear blue sky, no clods in sight.
Fast forward, It's 1999, a covert operation began around the world. Our air began to be poisoned with chemicals from the sky, ChemTrails. Who is doing this to our air, piosoning it with ChemTrails, my guess, the Elitists. Now here in Phoenix, the only clear cloudless skies are when the ChemTrail planes stand down.
An old Hopi Indian prophecy goes like this:
When you see cob webs in the sky, you will know that the end times are near.
Guess what, the ChemTrail begin as a nice narrow exhaust trail from the jet and within 39 minutes goes to cobweb clouds to full haze, very similar to the old LA smog.
So today, here he Phoenix Arizona and around the country, we have very polluted and poisoned skies with ChemTrails and the most beautiful red sunsets.
Wakeup people, instead in texting on your phones, look up, we are being poisoned from the skies with ChemTrails, much like the skies over VietNam were being poisoned with Agent Orange.

Don't get me started on Steve Jobs and Apple. If you want to get a handle on those 'captains of industry' Find out for yourself. Go find a used paperback copy of "Accidental Empires" by Robert Cringely on Amazon. You'll alternate between laughing yourself silly and shuddering that any of this bunch of twits might be offering the President "advice". jccampb

Jobs and Obama, the perfect couple... NOT.. This leftist, Radical takeover of our Country is OUTRAGEOUS! Folks, its time we took our country back! Vote all the incumbents out on Nov 2nd! Time to get back to the CONSTITUTION and the Bill Of RIGHTS! deport all illegal’s, now, all 12 to 20 million of them. Anchor babies can stay but their criminal parents go, period, and cut the phony tears, you knew you were breaking the law when you crossed the fence.

Next shut down any business hiring illegal labor and confiscate all property belonging to the owner. Property will be sold at auction and the proceeds to pay for the massive deportation. Oh and owners go to jail.

Three, re-tool immigration law and make the entry process easier for crime free immigrants. Up the quota for our neighbors to the south and allow more Mexican and Latin Americans to immigrate legally, after all they are Americans too.

And lastly, legalize pot and then throw the rest of your DEA resources at killing the criminal drug trade that is left and by kill, I mean dead, all of them.

Agent Orange was NOT orange in color - only the barrels it came in were. And it didn't "poison the skies" - it was not a chemical weapon in the sense of being an anti-personnel poison meant to linger in the air and cause harm to those who breathed it. It was, rather, an herbicide, like Roundup, used as a defoliant - meant to FALL DOWN TO THE TREES, to remove the leaves to prevent the enemy from being able to hide from aerial reconnaissance and air attack in the jungle.

As for pollution-enhanced sunsets, they are caused not by elaborate and mysterious chemicals but by conventional smoke, soot and particulate matter. That's why sunsets are more spectacular after volcanic eruptions, even halfway around the world.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa#Global_optical_effects

After the Industrial Revolution but before the modern environmental movement, when man-made smoke was much more prevalent in the atmosphere, sunsets were MORE spectacular than they are now. But still, to this day, cities such as Pittsburgh and Los Angeles have amazing sunsets, because of the former's steel and coal industries, and the latter's geographic sprawl, weak transit system, prevalence of automobiles, and being a giant bowl surrounded by mountains.

If indeed your experience of more amazing sunsets in AZ is real rather than imaginary, it is most likely caused by the neighboring giant L.A.'s growing smog problem.

If you're interested in solving that with rational, real-world solutions rather than paranoid imaginings, see my post above - alcohol fuel such as ethanol and methanol burns cleanly, with zero smoke, soot, or particulate matter. Skies above Brazilian cities have cleaned up substantially since they have gone for ethanol in a big way.

Finally air travel has become much more affordable, frequent, and common in the last several decades, even since 1980; no wonder you see more planes and contrails (NOT so-called "chem-trails") than decades ago.

"Three, re-tool immigration law and make the entry process easier for crime free immigrants. Up the quota for our neighbors to the south and allow more Mexican and Latin Americans to immigrate legally, after all they are Americans too."

I was just reading a piece about how the Democrats "might recapture the working-class vote".

It's funny that they and their acolytes still cling to these ideas after almost every Democrat in power has clearly shown herself/himself to think they are way superior to the "small people" - especially those in "flyover country". How they have shown total disdain for the armed services which are hugely supported by those same "working class folk".

They need to remember how every country with a self-appointed "elite" has seen those same elitists overthrown by the same working class that they looked down on.

Out here in the REAL world, we're all struggling to keep food on the table, a roof over our heads while MEE-chelle jets off to have her hand slobbered over by the King of Spain

Nice "common touch" there

We're living paycheck to paycheck, hoping to keep our jobs (if we haven't lost them already) and Obama focuses on esoteric principles rather than actually helping to create REAL jobs.

Nice "Common touch" there.

We're watching whatever savings we had, dwindle away while the government bails out Wall St fat cats with trillions of OUR tax dollars.

Nice "Common touch" there

We go without raises (those who still have jobs, that is) those on S.Security go without COL increases while government "workers" get raise after raise, benefit after benefit - firefighters earning $235k, toll-booth operators earning over $300k, city managers getting anything from $400k to 800k. We hear how government jobs ON AVERAGE now pay 50% MORE than real jobs in the private sector.

Nice "Common touch" there

We worry whether we'll be able to retire - EVER - while city employees get "defined" benefit pensions equal to their HIGHEST, manipulated (that is: "gamed") annual salary after contributing little during the time they worked. Often getting 2, 3 or more accumulative pensions - WE the taxpayers have to fund these (or pay higher sales tax so that "Police and fire services aren't cut")

Nice "Common touch" there

We worry whether we will be financially ruined if we or our children get sick while congress votes themselves "Cadillac" health coverage and exempts themselves from the lousy coverage we have access to. We see how our medical bills go up as doctors and pharmaceutical
companies raise their prices to cover the insurance they need to defend themselves against the politician's other best friends - the trial lawyers. While Obama, Pelosi & Co pass draconian, un-read legislation that causes insurers to RAISE our rates (mine threatened a 69% increase this year).

Nice "Common touch" there.

We work harder than ever, sometimes at two or more jobs. They have work for life, Easy work, often not voting, always not reading the laws that they pass on our behalf - Even if we vote them out, their rich buddies will look after them and they still have those great pensions that WE pay for.

We try to pay our fair share in taxes. After all we're law-abiding, ethical Americans yet John Kerry parks his "little yacht" in the next state to avoid taxes in his home state, yet nice Democrats like the Google guys "play the system" to get away with 2.4% total tax on their BILLIONS, I wonder how much George Soros pays - and the Dems claim that the Republicans are the "party of the rich" - Tell that to people like Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Nancy Pelosi, etc. etc.

And let's not forget Tim Geithner who "forgot" to pay his taxes until he came under scruitiny when Obama appointed hin Secretary of the Treasury.

Nice "Common touch there.

We send our children to "free" state schools that are really PAID for out of OUR taxes - We see larger and larger class sizes, lower standards, more indoctrination. While they send their kids to private schools.

Nice "Common touch" there

We forgo our modest vacations while they take several a year, typically to the swankiest places at $5k per NIGHT or more. They spend more in a couple of hours than we would spend for our entire vacation - IF we could afford to take one!

Nice "Common touch" there

We naiively vote for them to REPRESENT us. Thinking that they may actually have just SOME ethics and HONOR yet we hear things like "Don't call me Ma'am, call me SENATOR. I worked hard to get that title" - No you did NOT, it was GIVEN to you by We The People on the backs of our hard work, by the sweat and BLOOD of the servicemen and women that you were addressing.

Nice "Common touch" there

And they THINK that they "might reconnect with the working class"?????

@az-heat - You need to get out of the heat, it's affecting your brain.

"Agent Orange" was sprayed as a water-based aerosol and could never physically cause "orange sunsets".

Jet contrails are made up of water vapor - no chemicals - sorry.

We do have pollution to deal with and believe it or not, as a country we have one of the best records at cleaning it up. But get your facts straight. Otherwise I might think you're a politician or something.

Wow! Some of these comments from the tea angry crowd make it seem as all of a sudden being intelligent and elitist is a bad thing. If a conservative makes money as Bushes did- off the backs of others, or after every business fails somehow make a bunch of money anyway, what is that called? I tell you if you can't figure it out- it's called unethical and criminal. It's so obvious that there are those who are fools and seem to love being fooled over and over again.

Uh, Valerie - Being "intelligent" and "elitist" are mutually-exclusive.

Secondly most people in the Tea party movement are also critical of the Bush Administration's financial policies - But Obama has put himself in the spotlight, has spent 2-3 times as much in 20 months than Bush spent in 8 years and promises to do more harm to this country.

So by your own logic, if a LIBERAL makes money "off the backs of others, etc..." that makes it NOT "unethical and criminal"

Sorry ma'am, you your claim to "intelligence" just failed the Mensa logic test. I'll give you "elitist" though; you sound like you do have a valid claim to that appellation.

Luke-John says:
You need to get out of the heat, it's affecting your brain.

Actually, it is you that is slowing heating up, and it is your brain that is frying, Similar to the frogs in a pot of cold water on the stove, happily swimming around. But wait, it is slowly getting a little hotter, no problem until it starts to boil. The ChemTrails sprayers will slowly change our way of life, until it is too late to fight back.
Watch the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te_FOsKL_5Q

shaperdennis - The logical answer to that is "Not one dime more". When Apple closed their US plants, fired their US assmbly workers, and moved their operations over to China, the price of Mac's were not reduced by one dime. They have, in fact, increased on average. The only thing that has changed is that Apple and it's investors are reaping obscene profits. The iPhone, which sells for $700 and up, is available in Asia for around $25. Of course it's a knock off. But the cost, in terms of labor and parts, is around $15 to $20.

Steve Jobs has been an enormous positive creative influence at Apple and Pixar - creating whole industries. He is a creator. Obama has never created a job or a unique idea in his life and has dedicated his life to parasitism, to expropriating the wealth created by producers and giving them to his constituents. Obama loves the unemployed - that is why he is making so many of them.

Billionaires paying WHO-KNOWS-WHAT to the president and his cronies in Congress for special access and tax relief, and (of course) more jobs shipped overseas. But for the rest of us it's higher taxes and more unemployment. Who are the idiots that think the GOP is the party of the rich business people? !!! POP !!!! That was the sound of your bubble being bursting!

THAT'S JUST PERFECT!! -- 2 Lying Bas-tards meeting together! Stevie Gods who was the FIRST TO OUTSOURSE ALL OF THEIR PRODUCT MANUFACTURING OVER-SEAS in the early 1980's, and Hussein Obummer WHO THINKS HE'S A GOD and HAS FORCED MORE JOBS OUT OF THE USA!!

Apple is a marketing company , not a manufacturer. There are no Apple plants in the USA or China for that matter, Foxcon makes most of their products. So we have Jobs, the marketer that equals TALK, TALK, Talk and Obama that equals TALK, TALK, TALK. Both know how to destroy jobs, not make them!

There is no more cotton to be picked or assembly line jobs to be had, because of this change 35 million have become unemployable. Only a government no skilled jobs program will put them back to work. Unfortunately many tax payers would rather see them hanging out and doing nothing rather then pay the salaries of job challenged fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. It is time for a new change.

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